


No One Really Knows How the Parties Get to Yes(ssssss)

by WildnessBecomesYou



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, I can't believe I ran with this idea, Light Angst, M/M, Musicals, No beta we fall like Crowley, goodness gracious I guess enjoy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 10:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21014603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildnessBecomesYou/pseuds/WildnessBecomesYou
Summary: Crowley likes to befriend artists. It's kind of his thing.Sometimes, this means the artists depict him, in some form or another.Or: where do you think Leslie Odom Jr got that hissed sibilant inThe Room Where It Happened? I think he got it from Crowley. Let's explore that!This verges on crack fic.





	No One Really Knows How the Parties Get to Yes(ssssss)

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO! I'm sorry I've been away so long, moving countries is kinda busy, as it turns out. 
> 
> I won't have the same uploading vigor as before, but hopefully I can get back semi-regular releases. 
> 
> Anyways, enjoy this somewhat-cracky fic I've been working on for like three months!

It’s well known, among Crowley’s friends (so really, just Aziraphale), that the demon appreciates culture and creative people. He’d been a friend of Mercury’s, something that pained Aziraphale years later when the artist’s hand slipped from his as his last breath slipped from his lips. He’d had a friend in Da Vinci, too— enough to earn him several pieces of real, true art. He’d even befriended American artists: Sargent, O’Keefe, Angelou and Morrison, Armstrong and Cooke, Simone (Nina), and Cash. 

And, what with the world not ending and their Head Offices ignoring them, Crowley now had plenty of time to befriend more artists. 

At the current moment, he’d been developing a friendship with a hip-hop musical composer and creator. He’d go to Manhattan for a few days, come home with a few coffees in those delightful blue-gold-white cups, and regale Aziraphale with stories of a hip-hop nerd who also happened to be a musical genius. 

When _In the Heights_ burst on to Broadway, Crowley tugged Aziraphale along behind him. 

(It wasn’t that Aziraphale didn’t like New York City, but it was rather crowded, and he was slightly banned from the Public Library. We won’t speak of why.) 

(Not that any of the current workers would know him, but— the principle. And the angel was a principality, after all.) 

They left the theater with smiles on their faces. Crowley was hooked on the music.

He was not, Aziraphale regretted to admit, a very good rapper. Or even a decent one. But he loved it, and Aziraphale loved him. 

This particular spring Manhattan trip found Crowley lounging on the grass in a secluded part of Central Park. The sun above him was blocked out for a moment, and he grumbled as he opened his eyes. 

“Oh,” he said, snorting at the man above him, “you’ve grown out your hair.” 

His new artist friend sighed and plopped down. The sun came back over them both. “Yeah. Role. I mean I made the role— I mean there’s—“ 

“The President one?” Crowley asked, taking pity on Miranda as he closed his eyes.

“Yeah,” Miranda said back, huffing slightly.

They sat quietly. Well, Miranda sat, Crowley basked. 

And then, all of a sudden, Crowley heard— 

“Come on brain, be so smart, come on brain—“

“I’m going to hit you with my sunglasses.”

“I’m losing my mind anyways, you might as well!” 

Crowley groaned, but he was laughing. He sat up. “Listen,” he said, and Miranda turned his head to squint at the demon. “Okay, that’s weird, you look like your dad when you do that.”

“Oof, I’ll have you know my dad is a _handsome_ man!” 

“I— sure. I’m feeling peckish. Let’s go get shitty pizza.” 

“Yes please,” Miranda said, and they were up and on their feet. 

Sbarro wasn’t far anyways. 

Over pizza, Miranda explained his predicament. “I like this song— actually, who am I kidding, I love this song, but I just can’t seem to fit it in.”

“Gimme.” 

Crowley listens. And it’s a good song, it’s great actually, and Crowley loves it. But it doesn’t fit. 

“Congratulations.”

“Well that’s what I’d call it, if I could fit it in!” Crowley wiggles his eyebrows. “No, you— oh my God. Never mind.” 

But they’re laughing, and it’s shitty pizza for an excellent price, and shitty pizza for two turns into shitty pizza for four when a certain R&B singer and actor shows up, followed by an angel, and then shitty pizza for four turns into drinks. 

“I mean, like, thisssss idiot—“ Crowley nearly falls over with the force of the emphasis on idiot— “tells me we’re not friends. At a rendezvous point we set up.”

“My dear, I don’t know how many times I’ve told you I’m sorry—“ 

“ ’s kinda cute, actually,” Odom Jr smiles. His eyes crinkle and he laughs at Aziraphale’s expression. “I mean, yeah, it stings.” He claps a hand on Crowley’s shoulder and the demon looks at him with a strangely open expression. “You two had to fight a lot to be together. That takes guts, and…” he pauses to take a drink, carefully watching the two man-shaped beings. “Well, of course you’re going to hit speed bumps.”

“And we weren’t officially dating yet!” Aziraphale adds, face awash with gratitude. 

“To be fair, being friends usually comes first,” Miranda says from behind a glass. 

Aziraphale glares. Crowley throws his hands up in a ‘Look! See! I told you!!’ gesture. Odom Jr loses it laughing. 

At the end of the night, Crowley’s pulled aside. “Hey, man, it was really nice to meet you,” Odom Jr says. 

Crowley gives him a gentle smile, then covers it up with a grunt. “Likewise.”

“You mind if we exchange numbers? I know you know Lin’s brain, kinda want to pick yours for—“ he gestures between him and Miranda, and Crowley grins. 

He holds out his hand, plugs in his number, sends himself a WhatsApp message. “You free tomorrow? We don’t head out for a few more days.”

Odom Jr sighs. “I mean, if you don’t mind hanging out with a baby—“ 

“Love kids,” Crowley says quickly, kind of trying to play it cool. 

He does love kids, and kids love him. So he hardly notices the way Odom Jr is watching him when the little tot is crawling all over him. It startles him when the man asks “How’d you do it?”

“Do what?” the demon replies, eyebrows raised as the little girl wraps her pudgy little fingers around his sunglasses. There’s a surge of gratitude to himself this morning for slipping in colored contacts. 

“Wait so long?”

Crowley sighs. 

“I…”

There’s a long moment of silence. The human breaks it (they usually do). “Look, man, I don’t mean to make it awkward, we can just skip right over that.”

“Nah,” Crowley says. “We’ve known each other a long time. I’ve probably been in love with him almost the entire time.” He stops to look down at the little girl throwing his glasses across the room, then back up to her father, feigning a squint. 

Bless— damn?— the man, he got up and turned the lights off. As if he thought the lights hurt Crowley’s eyes. 

“So why…why wait on it?”

Crowley shrugs. “It was worth it.” The man in the room doesn’t say anything, so the man-shaped-demon continued, uncomfortable in silence. “He was— it was really his family, I guess, that didn’t want us together, had convinced him we weren’t supposed to be even _ friends._ And it’s not as if— we don’t have particularly s-s-s—“ Crowley’s sibilants become more insistent. He rolls his eyes at himself. “Safe jobs, I guess, and no matter who or what it wasss that went away, the two of usss were alwayss there. _He_ was— is— alwayss there. He pushed back once, and…” 

Odom Jr is watching him. Studying him. Crowley swallows uncomfortably. 

“Didn’t want to lose him,” he mutters, gaining control of his tongue as the little girl accidentally slaps his neck. He gently redirects her hand. “I was willing to wait.”

Crowley’s relieved as Odom Jr leans back and exhales heavily, like he’d been holding his breath the entire time. 

“Shit,” the man says, “you really, really love him.”

“Yeah,” Crowley mutters in reply, “I do.” 

It’s months later before Aziraphale hears about New York again, and he wants to be frustrated with Crowley. But the demon is so excited about this date that he’s cooked up— Aziraphale can’t resist that, really. 

So they go and see _Hamilton._

On opening night. 

Aziraphale stops breathing when the gentlest reggae starts up on the piano, and feels tears sting at the corners of his eyes at _“Theodosia, she’s mine.” _

It’s rough, and ragged, the delivery of that line, and he almost hears a hiss in the s’s, can almost feel Crowley’s eyes within Burr’s.

He clutches at Crowley’s hand, and God bless the demon, he squeezes back, lifts the angel’s hand to his lips for a kiss. Burr wails about rises and falls, and Aziraphale’s heart breaks, tears slip past his lashes. He tries very hard not to sob; he fails. 

He knows Burr, he realizes— Burr is sitting right next to him, and he loves that demon, and oh God, he’s not going to make it through the second act. 

And in the second act, Aziraphale shudders at the just-barely-off chords and talk of legacy. He squeezed Crowley’s hand tighter, and the demon pulls their joined hands into his lap, against the inside of his wiry thigh. 

He feels the familiarity of just-outside-decisions coming off Crowley in waves. He’s trying to disguise the strange cathartic hurt, but he’s not succeeding very well. 

_“No one really knows how the parties get to yessss—“ _

Aziraphale whips his head to stare at Crowley, and the demon shoots the angel a grin. 

At some point, Aziraphale can’t keep his emotions (or the contagion of other people’s) in anymore, and lets the tears go freely. He hiccups all of one time before Crowley lifts the chair arm between them (Aziraphale isn’t sure it’s supposed to move, but, well—) and pulls the angel close. 

They’re both fully sobbing at the end. 

_“And when my time is up, have I done enough?” _

“I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale whimpers, and Crowley shakes his head, pushes his fire-red hair back, and presses kisses to the angel’s curls. Aziraphale pulls his demon closer. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Crowley practically hisses. 

An older woman behind them hiccups through her own sobs and offers them a pack of tissues. Aziraphale laughs and takes them. 

Later, both Miranda and Odom Jr find Crowley and Aziraphale, and the look between Burr’s actor and his template is enough to confirm Aziraphale’s suspicions. 

It’s about another hour before he can get Odom Jr away from Crowley. Apparently the two have become good friends. 

“I don’t suppose your version of Burr is based on anyone, is it?” Aziraphale asks, then pops a cheese cube into his mouth. (It’s very nice cheese.) 

Odom Jr grins. He’s adorable, Aziraphale thinks. “C’mon, man, you know your boyfriend well enough to see him on stage!” 

“Husband,” Aziraphale corrects gently. 

Odom Jr softens. Aziraphale answers the smile with his own— smaller, but genuine, and just as bright. 

“And I do,” he continues, “though I’m— well, I wouldn’t like to see myself on stage, but I do think he enjoyed it, so…” he takes a deep breath and shuts out the rest of the party, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, man,” Odom Jr smiles back, gently wrapping his fingers around the angel’s forearm, “for lending me your husband for a bit.” 

There’s a quiet moment between them, and then they break apart, slowly drifting in their own conversation back towards the rest of the party.

**Author's Note:**

> Crowley was totally the model for Madame X, fite me


End file.
